Men in Nursing

I was reading some comments over at Fark.com about men in nursing. It seems as though I was linked to over there. Here's a smattering:

"RNs with specialty degrees make very good money. Double bonus is the number of hot chicks that also take nursing courses and career paths. Engineers make good money, but their schools and career paths are just way too male dominated."

Putting up with the stupid coont drama sucks, and no, nurses are NOT all hot and sexy. I can think of only one I've met who I would consder. The rest are fat farking slobs or skanks.

I'm a male nurse, So I know I'll get a kick out of these replies.

"what's wrong, Mister Nurse?
tired of being chastized
for teh ghey career"

"My Mom was a RN for over 50 years, and when asked if she would do it all over again, she says yes. She's in her 80's and still works a couple of days a week at the local hospital. I don't recall her making that much money, though. She is all pissed off because she can't go to Pittsburgh on Monday for some training conference because none of us kids have the time to drive her. She is threatening to drive herself. God help us all! Must hide car keys.

Mom knew a guy years ago who was a male nurse. He had a very hard time getting a job as a RN, he usually got offered jobs as an orderly, in spite of having a graduate degree. People thought it was weird for a guy to be a nurse back in the olden days. I can just imagine what people thought: homo, child molester, rapist etc. I think he finally moved out the the west coast and did much better in his field. Funny how things change. I can remember when female doctors were rare."

Me = newly single guy nurse

I get asked "What made you decide to become a male nurse?"

My reply is always "Once I considered the alternative I was more than happy to keep my penis."

What kind of a dickhead makes fun of a dude who's a nurse?

Especially since most of them were medics or corpsmen in the military. Combat medics have balls of cast iron.

"91B30 here! And I lost my original balls to an Iraqi mortar. Had 'em replaced with titanium alloy implants. Lighter and stronger than steel, more corrosion resistant than iron."

"I make fun of nurses just like I make fun of any other person whose job can be replaced by a robot loaded with a medical database. Get a real education."

"Male nurses: Too stupid to be doctors, too LOL to be real men."

"Please don't call them "your" patients. Doctors have their own patients, nurses don't. Nurses are just undereducated little helpers to real medical workers."

"As someone that has been in and out of the hospital for the last three weeks I would have to tend to agree. All doctors think that they are the smartest person and doctor in the damned world.

I went in with horrible acid reflux and abdominal pain by ambulance. The smart doctors decided that I needed four days of starving leading up to heart tests instead of a gastroenterologist. THey found nothing. Finally my RN spoke up to the doctors, and I got a GI consult. There was erosion in my esophagus amd stomach. Ta da, a genius diagnosis."

"as a doc i appreciate a good nurse. i very rarely have found a male nurse who was not absolutely excellent at thier job, maybe it's over compensation. with a code going, a drunk in dts, etc give me a good male nurse anyday. btw no disrespect to female nurses. a good nurse is a good nurse."

"Friend of mine is a Major who's been a nurse in the US Army for 20 years. He loves it. Spends all day in the cool clean hospital putting ace bandages on recruits and surrounded by young women, while other soldiers are runnning their butts off out in the heat getting screamed at.

If you look at him funny when he says "I'm a nurse" you are not going to like your hospital stay. And he'll be the one who put you there in the first place."

"Former Navy Corpsman and NYC Paramedic, Corrections Nurse and now ER RN (both in Bronx) checking in.

1) not that hard, guys. One day you might have kids, the getting past "icky" vomit, feces, urine and-god-knows-what not a bad skill to pick up. Although I get funny looks from nurses in my daughter's pediatrician's office when I request gloves to collect a urine sample from her).

2) Much less with teh ghey than I thought (more when I was in the Navy, believe it or not). Biggest professional job hazard: Old school nurses that feel threatened by a male in workplace.

3) There's drama and gossip if that's your thing (and I got a buddy who hunts to get away from his wife and kids occasionally who loves surfing the social milieu) or you can ignore it- and that's where the women come for a break from all the yenta-ing.

Otherwise, it's just a job, man- you have the opportunity to make some real differences in folk's lives, but holy crap, it ain't the mystical angel quiet servant of the doctor's word."

"Nurses are like the NCOs of the medical profession. Absolutely necessary and nothing to laugh about, male or female."

"they need someone to lick doctors assses and do 90% of the work and make 10 or 15% of the profit while the hospital administrators laugh all the way to the bank as they pay their lobbyist(american medical association) to bribe congressmen to get what they want. ain't freedom great??"

"want to work 60 to 80 hours/week? be a nurse."

"I work at a large Catholic hospital. There is definitely a "hierarchy" of nurses, depending on the nurses' education and motivation. The brightest and the best nurses usually have a specialized degree and are surgical, obstetric, or research nurses. The floor or ward nurses (the ones that tend to patients in hospital beds) are generally (though not always) the bottom of the barrel. These are the fat, cigarette-smoking drama queens that you all have been referencing. They are generally have a lower class and/or rural upbringing and pursued nursing because it was their best (or sometimes only) opportunity to get a decent job with minimal schooling (Associate's Degree).

However, it seems that male floor/ward nurses are exemplary. They are extremely kind, caring and competent. It takes balls to ignore the stereotypes and snide comments from friends, family members and strangers. Basically, men become nurses because it is what they are passionate about and they don't give a darn what others think...not because they need a way out of the trailer park."

" think everyone does it - you know, use various litmus tests to make sure the people they're around aren't complete idiots. If someone's a bigot, they're in the garbage heap. If someone's overly critical for the sake of being so, they're gone.

Making fun of someone's vocation because it doesn't fit stereotypes - yeah, that marks you as a moron of the first order. There's no need for reply, because I'm already done listening to you. Forever.

I don't think I'm the only one that has this particular filter."

"Both my folks graduated from nursing school. Mom kept going back to school, Dad stayed a nurse.
One day, someone asked my father when he graduated nursing school.
"1976," he said.
"Weren't all the male nurses still gay then?"
In all seriousness, though, there are a lot of steelworkers and coal miners who lost their jobs and got retrained as nurses.
Tell THEM they're not manly."

These examples, dear reader, are why I often say that male nurses suffer the last acceptable sexism on the job. It comes from all sides, simply because they are male, and is legitimized through acceptance. It's a wonder that nursing has the men in the profession that it does.